Accused Narco Official García Luna Faces Hesitant New York Jurors

The sequel to the El Chapo trial targets the capo's alleged political protection

In 2005, I met Genaro García Luna when he was a rising star in Mexican law enforcement, a 37-year-old with a square jaw and jet-black hair talking to a group of journalists about a new chapter in Mexico’s security. On Tuesday, I watched him walk into a federal courtroom in Brooklyn, New York, a 54-year old with silver-grey hair charged with pocketing millions of dollars in bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel to help it traffic mountains of cocaine to Americans. In between these two moments, García Luna was a key figure in the drug war that has raged to hell and back in Mexico, with countless seizures, arrests, and murders that have soaked the country in blood.

The case of the U.S.A. vs García Luna brings Washington’s war against drug trafficking into new territory; never before has such a high-level Mexican official been tried in an American courtroom. It makes sense. Once the DEA and federal prosecutors had taken down El Chapo, the most infamous gangster of the twenty-first century, it was hard to impress with putting more traffickers in the dock. So they went after El Chapo’s alleged political protection - an action that many journalists and activists had long called for.

First as head of AFI, dubbed Mexico’s FBI, from 2001 to 2006, and then as Public Security Secretary under President Felipe Calderón, from 2006 to 2012, García Luna was alleged to oversee safe passage for Sinaloan shipments of cocaine and tip the cartel off to operations and the movement of rivals. Gangsters personally gave him suitcases with millions of dollars, the prosecutors say. García Luna, they contend, ran with the cash to Miami where he splashed out on real estate and built a security company using his U.S. law enforcement connections.

García Luna is being tried in the same courthouse where El Chapo was found guilty, and with the same judge presiding. I went to a chunk of that trial and it was, putting aside for a second the catastrophic murderous impact of the cartel war, the height of judicial show business. You couldn’t help being impacted by the glamorous infamy of El Chapo sitting there calmly with his beauty queen wife Emma Coronel in the visitor’s galley, and his ostentatious mob lawyers. The New York media lapped it up, and stories of El Chapo busting out of prisons and running naked through tunnels filled up U.S. news bulletins.

In contrast, the American media was largely absent from Day One of the García Luna trial. Of the twenty or so journalists who arrived, most were Mexican, among them some of the most seasoned narco reporters. The court ruled we should stay out of the courtroom itself for the jury selection and put us in another chamber where we watched the proceedings on video screens. García Luna struck me as a slightly tragic figure, seeming to have aged two decades since his 2019 arrest, watching and taking notes. His lawyer César de Castro cut a modest figure compared to El Chapo’s team who made millions of dollars and had represented gangsters such as John Gotti.

As the jurors came in one at a time to be questioned by the judge, most were keen to get out as quickly as possible. They weren’t chiefly concerned about security, which was an issue in the Chapo case, with unfounded fears the Sinaloa Cartel would start blowing up Brooklyn. Although, one crying woman did look around the court at García Luna and said, “I find the people involved alarming.”

But mostly, they just wanted to get back to their lives and not sit in a court for up to eight weeks for a stipend of $40 a day. Jurors complained about having holidays lined up (a cruise and a skiing trip to Vermont), having to look after young children or a 99-year-old mother, getting ready for a product launch, getting ready for a DEI course, and one even wanted to keep up with his afternoon martial arts classes. This was, De Castro assured us outside, standard fare for a trial.

Others were excused from service after they admitted blatantly that they could not give a fair verdict. I was surprised how many said they were against the war on drugs, and didn’t trust law enforcement to the point they wouldn’t believe agent testimony. “The war on drugs in unwinnable,” one said. “Historically, the government has used it to subjugate a certain class of people,” said another. “It should all be legal,” said a third.

Another sticking point was over jurors saying they were skeptical of cooperating witnesses, meaning gangsters who would take the stand against García Luna. We don’t have an exact list, but it is speculated that the narcos appearing will include Mayo’s brother El Rey Zambada (who said he gave money to García Luna in the Chapo trial), the infamous blonde-haired Texan, La Barbie, and the huge Sinaloan mobster El Grande.

When jurors expressed doubt about the motives of such witnesses, the prosecution asked the judge to tell them that they could convict on these testimonies even if there was no supporting evidence. The prosecution might just be wanting to get rid of any potential weak jurors. But De Castro remarked outside, “I think they are telling you a little about their case, so let’s see,” implying they lack evidence.

The prosecutors have said they have thousands of audio recordings and documents and it would seem they must have strong evidence if they have gone this far. But we haven’t yet heard the recordings or seen what the documents show and we need to wait to be sure the case is water tight and there is a victory for the prosectutors considering how much would be at stake if the case fell apart.

Photo by Ioan Grillo

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